This month in my No Shame Exercise Group I have challenged our group to “fall” in love with ourselves! September was a busy month and before we get wrapped up in the holiday season, I thought it would be nice to take a little, self love time. Exercise and looking after yourself doesn’t always include squats sometimes your health can be improved by doing something simple like today’s challenge, lighting a candle and reading a good book! If you would like to join us in our monthly challenges feel free to join our Facebook group HERE!
For the past 13 years I have been going to the public library every 3 weeks to get the kids new books. When I was a new parent I took out books for myself about… Parenting 😂. Then for many years, I was just too exhausted to read. But I’m back Baby! I forgot how much I enjoy putting down my phone and reading a good novel. This month I stuck to a theme, as Halloween is coming up I decided to embrace the spooky season! For me that isn’t Stephen King or Dean Koontz or any other horror writer that may be out there nowadays lol for me Halloween is about magic. I also asked the Kids what they were reading and if they had any suggestions that fit my spooky theme and they each had a books series that they absolutely loved and that fit my fall vibe as well! Below is a quick review of some of our favourites as well as my attached affiliated Amazon link so you can purchase these awesome finds too!
SBean is all about fairytales and magic. My Sis bought HBear this series and while she enjoyed it, SBean loved it! I believe there are 12 books in all and the series is called, The Land of Stories. The books follow a brother and sister, 12 year old twins Alex and Connor who lose their Dad and then receive a magical fairytale book for their birthday from the Grandma. From there, they accidentally fall INTO the the book full of a magical world of fairytales and fast paced adventures. While trying to get back home they encounter witches, wolves, goblins, and trolls. Although the level was easy enough for SBean to read on her own, Ninja loved this series too and they read it together every night. Now that the Land of Stories is done they have moved on to the next series by Chris Colfer (yeah the same guy that was in Glee!) The Tale of Magic! SBean is loving that series too! In fact, HBear just read his young adult book Stranger Than Fanfiction last month and loved it too!
HBear also has a series that she has been reading for a while now and recently finished! It is a suspenseful sci-fi 8-book series called The Missing. It is about famous children from history stolen by futuristic time travellers and accidentally sent to the 21st-century. When 36 babies are mysteriously discovered on a plane with no pilot, they are quickly adopted but when they are 13, one of the missing, Jonah, starts to receive strange letters and begins to figure out that he was one of the babies found on that mysterious plane. He then has to work with his sister to travel through history to return the stolen children to their rightful times to fix the timeline before it’s destroyed. HBear loved this series!
When I took out this next book, The Night Circus I had no idea what to expect. It’s about 10 years old so I hadn’t recently heard anything about it. However the premise engaged me from the beginning, a magical duel between strangers and the venue is a magical travelling night circus! It’s set in the late 1800s/early 1900s and there is a lot of time jumping but I couldn’t put this book down! The author writes in such a gorgeous descriptive way that you can picture being there, her world of magic and revelry is beautiful! In the black-and-white world of the night circus anything can happen and everything does! This is a stunning book about a magical game in which the players may fall in love but in the end there can only be one winner.
And then there’s this book. My new favourite trilogy! When I took this book out I had no idea what I was getting into! I feel like if you like Outlander and Game of Thrones… This series is for you! It’s called the All Souls Trilogy and the first book starts with A Discovery of Witches. This book is written like there are humans, demons, witches, and vampires living in the world all together. It combines history, magic, and science! It revolves around alchemy, a fated relationship between a 1000 year old vampire and the last witch in the bloodline of the first witch killed in the Salem witch trials. In the second book, which is my favourite so far (I haven’t read the final book yet), they travel back to Elizabethan England where they try to save the fate of the world with Sir Walter Raleigh, Kit Marlowe and the Queen herself! The main character, Diana is a historian who focusses on alchemy or the mixing of magic and science while her new husband is a scientist studying DNA and bloodlines of all 4 of the different species. It was 100% not what I was expecting and I read the first 2 books so quickly that I have now forced myself to slow down and not rush the third and final book in the series. I was happy to find out that they also made a TV show based on the trilogy! After I finished the first book I began to watch the first season… It’s not quite the same and definitely not as good as the TV series Outlander but I’m very excited for season 2 when they travel back to the 1500s!
Check out How Was Your Week, Honey? Episode #296: I’ll 86 you! HERE! This week we get together to discuss: chasing bugs, warm Fall, golf talk, the Bachelor, Andor, pool season, Stanley Cup draft, SOW, & the 80’s.
My MMBesty sent me this recipe MONTHS ago. I made it right away and we all LOVED it, we are BIG fans of pork tenderloin. I waited to share it with you until now because I think it is a perfect fall dish. Comfort food at its BEST! Actually, this would be perfect for a small family Thanksgiving dinner next week! It is easy to make, only takes a few ingredients that you probably already have on hand, and the sauce is SO good I smothered my mashed potatoes AND my coleslaw in it!!!
Honey Garlic Pork Tenderloin
2 pork tenderloins
1 tablespoon oil
½ teaspoon seasoning salt
⅔ cup honey
¼ cup chicken broth
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons garlic, minced
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
¼ teaspoon salt
1½ tablespoons corn starch
⅛ teaspoon red pepper flakes
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F and lightly grease a baking dish.
Place tenderloins in baking dish, brush oil or spray with THIS amazing glass oil spay bottle and season all over with seasoning salt.
Whisk together honey, broth, soy sauce, garlic, vinegar, salt, corn starch and red pepper flakes.
Pour sauce around pork tenderloin in pan — avoid pouring on top of pork as it will prevent it from browning.
Bake, uncovered, for 15-20 minutes until a meat thermometer reads at least 140 degrees F. Remove from the oven and cover to rest for 10 minutes. We were running late so we sliced to soon and didn’t rest long enough 😆.
Slice pork tenderloin and serve with sauce.
It’s October! The Kids had a short week with a Pro-D Day on Monday and Truth and Reconciliation Day on Friday. Thursday was picture day for HBear plus Orange Shirt Day! Oliver got lots of walks, cuddles, and even a car ride in! SBean used her first day off to bake delicious pumpkin muffins and to receive lots of Mommy snuggles! I went out for coffee with my SBesty, she just lost her Mom and having gone through that in my own life, I make a fantastic sounding board for friends and their grief 💛. On Friday we enjoyed a delicious homemade Donaires made with love by my Sis and BIL! After lunch Ninja and I went to Costco and HBear babysat all the kids and had a sleepover with SPea and CPatch. Ninja and I enjoyed our night alone together with a bottle of wine on the balcony, some delicious take out from Time Winery and by catching up on the latest episode of Andor! The next day HBear went golfing with Daddy and Uncle Seb. We finished our week by hosting the Formally Known As The Fourth Line Podcast Hockey Fantasy Draft and with SBean lost another tooth for the Tooth Fairy!
